'Blue Is Life Blue' wins Best Fiction at Atta Galatta

Blue Is Like Blue, by Vinod Kumar Shukla, translated from the Hindi by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Sara Rai has won Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize 2019 for Best Fiction (English).

'Blue Is Like Blue' has been published under Harpercollins' translations imprint Harper Perennial.

Proud of the achievement, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Sara Rai, the translators of 'Blue Is Like Blue' said, "In a country where the world of writing is crowded with agony aunts, or film stars, or saffron-clad entrepreneurs, or Bollywood lyricists, or the peddlers of inspirational books, or the ones who describe themselves as foodies or mythologists or social media influencers, it is heartening that the prize has gone to someone like Vinod Kumar Shukla, who, for the past 60 years, from the unglamorous city of Raipur, has been weaving tales that are as down to earth as they are magical."

Other books written by Vinod Kumar Shukla and published by HarperCollins India are - Once It Flowers translated by Satti Khanna, Moonrise from the Green Grass Roof translated by Satti Khanna, 'The Windows in Our House Are Little Doors' translated by Satti Khanna (to be published in December 2019), Yasi Rasi Ta (in Hindi).

Renowned for bringing the marvellous to the ordinary, Vinod Kumar Shukla has long been recognized as one of India's foremost writers, with a voice uniquely his own. The stories in 'Blue Is Like Blue' deal with 'smaller-than-life people'. They live in rented accommodation, often in single rooms, where one electric bulb does for light. There's a nail to hang clothes from and a wall-to-wall string for the washing. When the clothes are dry, you place the carefully folded shirt under a pillow and lie down to sleep. Money is a concern, but the bazaar is the place to go and spend time in, especially if you have nothing to buy. The fear that you may be overcharged accompanies every transaction, but joy is not entirely absent. Few works of modern Indian literature come alive in English, and fewer still in the way that these stories do in Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Sara Rai's brilliant translation.